Update on the Future of FTB Modpacks in 1.7

[Iskandar]

Eh, I for one think it is way, way overdue that the "cram all mods possible into one pack!" thing to die. While you might argue for it for SMP so everyone can do their own thing, the problems that it brings it is just not worth it.

Unwanted cross mod interaction, or bugs is a big thing. And performance is becoming another. There has been a growing trend of people having trouble running the big packs. Not everyone has access to the latest and greatest computers, and having a pack that refuses to run, or runs poorly, on low end systems is not a good thing.

And the nice thing about 1.7 is that adding mods to a pack has become almost trivial. So for those wanting more mods in a pack can generally just drop and go.

 

[RavynousHunter]

I will admit, the upcoming overhaul to BuildCraft seems incredibly tantalizing. I haven't been able to use the Builder since freaking 1.2, and I'll be happy to finally be able to easily build additions on to my base above-ground, so I don't have to keep living in bleeding caves.

 

[Tyriael_Soban]

There's to much focus on energy systems in my opinion and not on the content and fun.

I use Thermal Expansion because of some of the fancy content/items/machines it has.
I use MFFS because i enjoy the forcefield content.
I use factorization because of the fun and unique complicated content it has.
I use rotarycraft because of the realistic content it has.
I use Buildcraft because of some of the fancy content/items/machines it has.
I use railcraft because i enjoy creating advanced trains and tracks.
I use IC2 because of some of the fancy content/items/machines it has.
I use Forestry because of some of the bees and content around it has.

Some of these mods are old and they have complicated ways of doing stuff. That is fun. Several new mods are too simple, but there comes the choice right? so why same pack? Because of how you can combine the mods in fun ways.

Energy systems is not everything. I choose whatever i like in times to times and combining them. Even if several mods add similar content, thats just part of the fun. The choices and how one choose to combine them. You mentioned that you have to rebalance all the packs all the time. Can you atleast have 1 "all in one pack"?

I know what you mean, and i for one actually can't help feeling slightly betrayed by TE and their RF system, while it has forced everyone to think of a new way to deal with MJ power, they've separated themselves and now seem to be on some megalomaniac fight to be the king of modpack energy, its very disturbing.
Back in 1.4 we had a working system - IC2 compatible mods used EU, TE & BC & Forestry used MJ and anything that worked with UE used their energy system, i only counted 3 in most modpacks and the one i was using back then (Mindcrack)only had 2, the only other system i remember from 1.4 was Redpower and blutricity didn't really leave the redpower network.
I just don't understand why everyone has such a hardon - (if you'll forgive the metaphor i don't have a better one right now, i just woke up) for TE - they broke the system, before they decided they had to add their own energy system, everything was fine. (at least as far as i could see it?)
Id actually like to call for someone to write a converter mod for third party packs so we can kick RF in the nuts please, its a totally unnecessary pain in the backside.

 

[keybounce]

(I had mentioned maps, like Ocean block / pancake/ etc)

So, basically, you are following the narrative someone else designed for you: tl;dr Do not destroy wool, do not destroy blocks, do not take the ender chests... take this HQM book and do its bidding, you unworthy so and so, yadda yadda....

I was still speaking of "do anything sandbox" with a bunch of mods in them, and you are like Alice in wonderland, tumbling along, discovering interesting gameplay dynamics as you go tumbling down the rabbit hole.

Actually, every one of those maps is a "do anything" map. But they come with quest books/goal books.

In the case of things like Ocean Block / pancake, the idea is to start with the most restricted possible setup that still permits doing anything in vanilla. For pancake, for example, you start with an infinite plane of dirt, one lava block in the ground, one of each tree, and a chest containing 10 obsidian and a piece of flint, plus a book of goals. Agrarian Skies has a bunch of mods, altered recipes, and special mods for generating things from nothing.

In general, the rule for these is "follow the quests, in order, and one builds on the next one".

---

Other special story maps generally tend to be like Vech's -- play in this world, do anything you normally do, but also you now have these sidequests or overall goals. The "Play in some restricted form of adventure mode" type of map does exist, yes, but I'm not thinking of those.

 

[Mevansuto]

I use Thermal Expansion because of some of the fancy content/items/machines it has.
I use MFFS because i enjoy the forcefield content.

MFFS likely won't move seeing as its immensely compatible with RF.

 

[Mevansuto]

I have such little respect for them, not only do I not capitalize the term I will never bother to spell it properly.

I love this excuse. This works on so many levels. Anybody with any sense will refuse to question it as they'll seem like Nazi sympathisers. This is almost worth applause.

 

[Bagman817]

A good decision, I think. Buildcraft has failed to evolve. Looking back to my worlds since 1.25, There's been a steady decline in my usage of BC proper, as compatible mods have steadily replaced its power generation and delivery mechanics. In 1.6, the quarry was finally replaced, leaving the Filler the only block I use from the mod. In 1.7, the Builder looks interesting, but would I actually use it? Not much, I imagine. To me it certainly wouldn't be worth adding a mod as large as BC for 2 blocks, so I'd probably remove it from a pack regardless.

Also, I don't think people realize the impact of removing IDs in 1.7 will have. Don't like a pack? Add/delete a bunch of mods from one of the baselines, and enjoy. It's easy to do that now, compared to 1.25, but it will be relatively trivial in 1.7.

 

[JusticeOF666]

A good decision, I think. Buildcraft has failed to evolve. Looking back to my worlds since 1.25, There's been a steady decline in my usage of BC proper, as compatible mods have steadily replaced its power generation and delivery mechanics. In 1.6, the quarry was finally replaced, leaving the Filler the only block I use from the mod. In 1.7, the Builder looks interesting, but would I actually use it? Not much, I imagine. To me it certainly wouldn't be worth adding a mod as large as BC for 2 blocks, so I'd probably remove it from a pack regardless.

Also, I don't think people realize the impact of removing IDs in 1.7 will have. Don't like a pack? Add/delete a bunch of mods from one of the baselines, and enjoy. It's easy to do that now, compared to 1.25, but it will be relatively trivial in 1.7.

I think BC did evolve , if you look at newest builds ... Just a bit late.

 

[eashonk]

I know what you mean, and i for one actually can't help feeling slightly betrayed by TE and their RF system, while it has forced everyone to think of a new way to deal with MJ power, they've separated themselves and now seem to be on some megalomaniac fight to be the king of modpack energy, its very disturbing.
Back in 1.4 we had a working system - IC2 compatible mods used EU, TE & BC & Forestry used MJ and anything that worked with UE used their energy system, i only counted 3 in most modpacks and the one i was using back then (Mindcrack)only had 2, the only other system i remember from 1.4 was Redpower and blutricity didn't really leave the redpower network.
I just don't understand why everyone has such a hardon - (if you'll forgive the metaphor i don't have a better one right now, i just woke up) for TE - they broke the system, before they decided they had to add their own energy system, everything was fine. (at least as far as i could see it?)
Id actually like to call for someone to write a converter mod for third party packs so we can kick RF in the nuts please, its a totally unnecessary pain in the backside.

Are you suggesting that mods should depend upon other mods that often times get abandoned and fail to get updated for months on end in order to function? Of course a mod whose core is a bunch of machines requiring power would create its own system. It's not their fault if other mod devs choose to use their power source over another. TE looks better than IC2, it is more intuitive to understand than IC2. You question why people choose TE over others, well for one, you don't have to go read some wiki that hasn't been updated before you start. Another thing is, if your mod is gonna break things because you want to pick up a block, or blow something up because of the wrong wire, you should probably figure out some way to warn people in game. If this isn't the case, obviously MOST people are going to gravitate towards the simpler, safer option. Personally, I don't have time to hop on google every 5 mins to figure out crap. I want to play the game with what little time I have to do so. I got words to misspell, people to stalk and a full time job.

*On a side note, I love the books, but it is getting a little ridiculous, one of you wonderful devs following this should make a mod that takes all spawned books and compiles them into 1 volume, otherwise we need to start spawning with a bookshelf as well.

 

[SatanicSanta]

Glad to see this is gonna actually happen \o/
Themed packs i always thought were something that were really fun, and needed to be looked into a bit more, and with these changes, I'm glad how its more likely for them to be made \o/
Good thing 1.7 is -slowly- coming along, Witchery is the only major mod i can think of, that isn't being updated/is updated yet.

*goes back to Chisel and Totemic developing*

Forbidden Magic isn't being updated anymore.

And to avoid confusion, Witchery still gets updated, just not to 1.7.

snip

Yeah, I don't play FTB packs. But, the packs the modpack team puts out, and the mods that are included, affect me greatly. I mean, this doesn't affect that many people, but still.

Won't lie. I do this. Doom-like dungeons and Greymerk's dungeons go in all my private packs and [zisteau's maniacal laugh erupts for the ensuing 4 hours] dungeon raiding FTW!

You've tried out Better Dungeons, I assume. That's probably my favorite dungeon mod.

I don't understand why there aren't only four specific FTB "products":

FTB Flagship pack
Magic pack
Lite pack
Experimental pack

Also a tech-only pack for them magic-haters.

There's to much focus on energy systems in my opinion and not on the content and fun.

Someone said it, finally.

its a totally unnecessary pain in the backside.

I haven't toyed around with it too much, but I do have a basic system going in my current world. I've got to say, it is fairly plain, especially when you compare it to MJ or EU. They both have power requirements for all the machines, which is something I hugely miss from RF. You don't have to figure out how many dynamos, cells, etc. you need to power your machine without it exploding. You simply plop down as many as possible and it works fine.

I wouldn't take anything I've said about RF too seriously, because I've only gotten as far as a single dynamo, a hardened cell, some machines from Mekanism, TE, and EnderIO, and some hardened conduits.

 

[Pokefenn]

Forbidden Magic isn't being updated anymore.

And to avoid confusion, Witchery still gets updated, just not to 1.7.


Yeah, I don't play FTB packs. But, the packs the modpack team puts out, and the mods that are included, affect me greatly. I mean, this doesn't affect that many people, but still.


You've tried out Better Dungeons, I assume. That's probably my favorite dungeon mod.


Also a tech-only pack for them magic-haters.


Someone said it, finally.


I haven't toyed around with it too much, but I do have a basic system going in my current world. I've got to say, it is fairly plain, especially when you compare it to MJ or EU. They both have power requirements for all the machines, which is something I hugely miss from RF. You don't have to figure out how many dynamos, cells, etc. you need to power your machine without it exploding. You simply plop down as many as possible and it works fine.

I wouldn't take anything I've said about RF too seriously, because I've only gotten as far as a single dynamo, a hardened cell, some machines from Mekanism, TE, and EnderIO, and some hardened conduits.

Forbidden magic isn't being updated by Spitefulfox*

 

[SatanicSanta]

Forbidden magic isn't being updated by Spitefulfox*

Right. I think someone said they are updating it, but in the same way MPSA was updated- completely new code. So that may take a while. I don't know of any other people who are updating it.

 

[Pokefenn]

Right. I think someone said they are updating it, but in the same way MPSA was updated- completely new code. So that may take a while. I don't know of any other people who are updating it.

There is someone who 'officially' took it over, then there is someone who posted on this forum, saying they were, just so they could take the fame of a established mod without any effort xD

 

[Machu1299]

I've not been around the modding community lately, in fact not even really the MC community lately, but trying to get back into it, and I was wondering what in 1.7 makes modpacks so much easier to make? Are ID's gone?

 

[Pokefenn]

I've not been around the modding community lately, in fact not even really the MC community lately, but trying to get back into it, and I was wondering what in 1.7 makes modpacks so much easier? Are ID's gone?

They are gone to users, as in you don't need to ever configure them, and there is no conflicts.

 

[Machu1299]

They are gone to users, as in you don't need to ever configure them, and there is no conflicts.

So, essentially, you can put almost any mod together and it will work?

 

[Pokefenn]

So, essentially, you can put almost any mod together and it will work?

No, mods can still have incompatibilities.
It means that most mods (Barring any crash issues) will be able to run, without id conflicts stopping the game.

 

[RavynousHunter]

Aye, it makes one part far simpler, meaning that pack design has one fewer headache to worry about. Though, if what my girlfriend's experience is any indication, vanilla 1.7 is unfortunately a tad unstable. Like, it'll crash, but you can't kill the MC process, even in bleeding Task Manager; to get rid of it and free up the resources its using, she's had to restart every damned time. Wouldn't be as huge a problem if it didn't crash about once every 90 minutes. Though, knowing the win that is Forge, they've probably fixed this and found a way to make MC give us cookies in real life thru our computer screens.

 

[IBeRamen]

Smart move by the modpack team.

 

[kenny1997]

Firstly I would like to thank all of the FTB team for all the hard work they have put into creating these packs.

Secondly, I wholeheartedly support the using of RF as the main power supply, as it is one of the most flexible ways of using power. The reason so many modders have switched to it, is probably because it is rather easy to add support due to the API, and simple code.

Thirdly I feel sad that bees and forestry are probably not going to be updated. They were great mods, but I guess its their time to join the rest of the legacy mods

Which brings me to buildcraft and IC2. I love buildcraft; it was the first mod I ever used, and I love it. IC2 came a bit later down the line, however TE3 has all but replaced all their functionality. I am by no means saying this is a bad thing, it was expected to happen one day, and today is that day. Im not gonna bicker over two mods with limited functionality (I use item ducts instead of pipes and the only 2 ic2 items I use are the induction furnace and jetpack). These two behemoths have had a glittering history, but sadly their time as the main mods has come to an end. They will likely never be forgotten, but rather cherished, as two mods which have in their own way, set a standard for other mods out there.

Anyway my rambling is over, thanks for everything guys, and enjoy playing!